New York Times: CIA pays AT&T $10 million a year for access to international phone records

The Central Intelligence Agency has been paying communications giant AT&T millions of dollars a year for access to the company's overseas phone records, according to a story by The New York Times.

According to the story, the CIA provides a list of phone numbers of overseas terrorism suspects then AT&T will search its database for those numbers and provide the agency with records generated by those numbers.

The access to the database is conducted under a voluntary contract, according to the story. In other words, the records are not subpoenaed.

Dean Boyd, a CIA spokesman, was quoted in the story as saying that the agency’s intelligence collection activities
were lawful and “subject to extensive oversight," but he did not confirm the existence of the program.

Mark Siegel, an AT&T spokesman, was quoted in the story saying, “We value our customers’
privacy and work hard to protect it by ensuring compliance with the law
in all respects. We do not comment on questions concerning national
security.”